About a decade ago I started to get panic attacks. If you have ever had them you will know what an utterly ridiculous thing they are – your brain convinces you that you are going to die despite the lack of lions or marauding hordes. A seemingly small incident trips you into full panic mode, your breathing goes wild, your heartbeat through the roof and you honestly believe you are going to die. What a laugh, thanks brain. Thankfully, I met a remarkable therapist who flipped some switch in my mind tank which literally stopped my panic attacks in their tracks. Hallelujah. My brain found a new way to respond and I could resume normal service.

As some of you may know, a couple of months ago I bought myself a Lipizzaner mare that I planned to slip seamlessly into my herd as my second in line steed to train with Philippe Karl. However, the move, her breeding, the change in circumstances and re-introduction to work (she had spent 3 years not working , living with her small herd in a field) blew her Hungarian brain and for the first few weeks she was permanently having a panic attack.

I want to talk a bit about what I have been doing to help Remy with her anxiety, but I need to explain that in the initial days my motivation was not entirely selfless. I also wanted to stay alive and in one piece. Crazy, I know. So, although I employed approaches which I hoped would ultimately help her feel better, I pretty much just did what I needed to do to keep me safe. Which in turn meant I might be alive long enough to be able to help her feel safe. The number one thing we worked on was DO NOT RUN ME OVER. I did this in any way I could, everywhere I needed to and it involved me carrying a tea towel on a stick. It also meant that sometimes the 400 yard walk to the field took 45 mins as I repeated this again and again – Do Not Run Me Over. Every single time she decided to shoot past or through me, or carried on walking blindly into me as she peered at whatever she was worried about, then I tried my best to explain that she needed to pay attention to where I was and what my feet were doing.

This was emotionally and physically draining work, but I didn’t have much choice. And what I really, really hoped would happen is that Remy would begin to recognise that I was not punishing, that my intention for us both was good and that I was consistent. And that in time, she may begin to see consistency as reliability. And that reliability was a really useful thing for a horse who was worried about life. If she didn’t come to realise those things, at least I wouldn’t get stood upon.I am not often proud of myself but I am quite impressed with my tenacity. This became my moto – when Remy gets anxious DO SOMETHING. You might get it wrong, you might be unsure what to do, you might realise afterwards that you should have done something different, but don’t leave her alone with her anxiety. In early sessions with her this could mean ‘doing’ something every half a stride when leading her in. I wanted to show her there was an alternative to anxiety and that I might have some part to play in this. I didn’t want to leave her practicing being anxious as she is clearly a past master in that.

Let me give you an example. In the evenings I would lead Remy out of the field to eat her dinner in the adjoining paddock. She was so worried that even this was a trial for her – she would snatch a mouthful of food and then stare out into the distance- rigid with anxiety. Every single time she did this, I would say something to her, usually down the lead rope. I would pick up what is often described as a ‘feel’( which I guess we all have our own version of), and attempt to show her that I had noticed her anxiety and was presenting an alternative. To begin with I would meet a concrete horse at the end of the line. Eventually she would return mentally, relax and begin eating. And then a bird would cheep and we would go through the whole thing again. What I was attempting to show her was that she didn’t need to be responsible for worrying about everything all the time and I needed to give her more experiences of relaxing than panicking. The odds were somewhat stacked against me as her brain took the super highway to anxiety before you could blink. However, over the weeks, the time lag between Remy beginning to worry and responding to me began to get smaller.​When I have not known what else to do, I have hung on to this theme – when Remy is anxious I will try to show her an alternative . I don’t always know how and sometimes I try things which at best don’t work and sometimes make things worse. Some days I have wondered if anyone would notice if I turned a bay Lipizanner out with the local Dartmoor pony herd. On other days, I have been blown away by her ability to learn something, or handle something which would previously have sent her spinning. When she is feeling o.k. she is one of the sweetest horses I have ever met.

I was beginning to worry that I was trying too many different approaches. Sometimes it seems better to blend with what she was offering and then attach an aid to it, on other days actively breaking her chain of thought and asking her to pay attention to me was more effective. Some days being structured and working on ‘stuff’ really helps, on other days being more freeform is more her bag. Sometimes being very firm helps, sometimes being as mellow as possible gets to the nub of it. I was beginning to wonder if I should just stick to one approach and apply it every time. Then, while flipping through Bill Dorrance’s book I came across this typically impenetrable and utterly lovely passage:

“There are many different ways to present feel to a horse so you’re continually going to be searching and adjusting. By that, I mean just changing what you present to him as the circumstances change, and as the horse’s movements and (facial) expressions change. You’d be doing this all the time that you’re working with him and be all the time real aware. ....But, by putting in that last part there about all the time being ready to change what you do, we’re not saying that being consistent with a horse isn’t real important too. It is real important to that horse’s foundation that a person be consistent.”​Be always ready to change and always totally consistent. Thanks Bill, What could be more straightforward? The riddle and the temptation is found in this. It’s what keeps drawing me back to working with a horse like Remy. Your foundations need to be utterly consistent, your presentation perpetually adaptable. How many lifetimes do we get again?

Since I have shared some of the issues she Remy thrown up, a number of people have said to me ,‘She’ll be alright when she trusts you’. I have thought long and hard about what this might mean to a horse. How does a person prove their trustworthiness to a large prey animal? At what point would we say that a horse shows they trust a human?

I do have to remind myself that horses are not humans. It is easy to forget it, as the horses I hang out are so familiar and so able to communicate their wants and needs to me, that I can easily anthropomorphosise. I do get occassional reminders of quite how differently they see the world though. For instance, the herd Remy is in know her and she is a part of their dynamic. Then one day, when it was really raining and she was cold I put a rug on her and they attacked and chased her like she was a new horse all over again. How could they not recognize Remy with a rug on? I recognize my friends when they have a hat and a new coat on. Even with sunglasses. There are clearly some things which are very different for horses than they might be for us. Don’t assume that you know how horses see the world, as it is probably far more different than we will ever realize.

One way in which a person might prove their trustworthiness to me, as a human, would be that they have congruence – for instance, their behavior matches their words. The majority of the time, they do what they say they will. And through their words and behaviours I come to believe that they essentially want the best for themselves AND for me and don’t have an agenda which is about undermining others. If we were to try to extrapolate any of this to the equine relationship we would have to take out most of the language element and pretty much just rely on behaviour, and how that might show a horse that we are something they can trust. Humans might also be get on a bit better if they assessed the behavior of others and ignored their words – it might change who we voted in for instance...

When I see Remy with the herd now her behaviour indicates to me that she ‘trusts’ them. She is not anxious when she is with them. When something happens the herd assess the situation and very rarely choose to do anything which is really high energy. Human concepts of ‘getting one over’ on each other don’t exist here, and ‘being nice’ to each other is also not high on the agenda. Remy is told by the lead mare where to be and what to do and Remy appears to be safe in the knowledge that someone else has it covered.

Now, I am not a horse, so I can’t recreate herd behaviour. When the more hideous horsemanship trainers resort to grim bullying it is often justified by replicating the physical element of the way horses act together (based largely on what is seen in resource limited domesticated herds) to dominate and subdue. So, what can I learn from horses which I can usefully replicate, which might help Remy to ‘trust’ me? Here are some of my best guesses.

I can be consistent. That is actually much, much harder work than we might imagine, and can involve sacrificing what we set out intending to do, in order to give the horse the consistency it needs. If I want a horse to learn something which is important for it to exist in a human world, then I have to be utterly consistent in the way I teach it. For example, I want to be able to mount my horse safely from any hedge, rock or mounting block in any situation. And, I want my horse to be able to stand still on a long rein in any situation. Greedy, huh? I want to teach my horse to stand still for me to mount and wait EVERYWHERE and ANYWHERE. The onus is then on me to be utterly consistent.

When Des first arrived from Portugal standing still on a long rein was an utterly unfamiliar concept to him and I spent 3 weeks, daily (I ain’t jokin’) working on this before he finally realised what I meant. These felt like long, dizzying weeks - Lusitanos are excellent at spinning, and it takes a strong stomach and a certain doggedness to stick it out to the point where the horse realizes that it ALWAYS ends in them standing still on a long rein. This behavior will show up again when Des has been out of work for a while or something very exciting happens, like he goes out for a ride with a mare. And then I have to go through the whole thing again. I don’t use force or pain, it is just a matter of persistence and always committing to seeing it through. In the early days it meant I had to forsake some of the things I actually wanted to do with Des as it just would not have been fair on him. How could Des ‘trust’ my behaviour if on some days I couldn’t be bothered to deal with this and just allowed him to roar off, shaking his mane?

I can be clear. I can try very hard to work out how to explain what I want as quickly as possible in a way which makes sense to the horse. One of the biggest problems I see for the horses of people I teach is a lack of clarity (which is consistency’s bed mate), and I know I am far more likely to struggle with this with my own horses and hover in what Sarah would call a ‘grey area’. A lot of horses are so generous, and have become so used to the muddled signals of humans that they fill in some blanks for us. Despite conflicting, vague, inconsistent aids, a lot of horses have a punt at responding with their best guess. However, there are many horses given the label of dangerous or difficult, who are just trying to express that they have no idea what we want. Do you really know what you want your horse to understand and do you have a clear idea of how you are going to show them that? Whether that be raising the base of their neck or working with you to get around a gate – are you banking on your horse working it out, or do you have a clear means of explaining?

I can try my best to not put my horse into situations they can’t handle. And if I do inadvertently do this, I will try my best to ask them to deal with it in a way that they can handle. I may get this wrong, as I can only learn what works with different horses through trial and error, so the important thing is that I learn from my mistakes and adapt.

In our outdoor school there is a gate that has the wrong feng shui for horses – it is dark, surrounded by trees and occasionally things go past which cannot quite be seen. It worries some horses and not others – Garbie and Tycoon don’t give it a second glance, but Des and Remy are both not sure it might not be harbouring a horse eating terror. On the days when Des tries to avoid it, I know that he is well schooled enough, experienced enough and knows me well enough that I will recognize it , but ask him to carry on working past it, on the line that I ask, at the speed that I ask. We may have to shoulder fore past it, but I don’t concede much more than that as I know he can handle that.However, at the stage Remy is at, I have to be a lot more creative. In time, I want her to work in the school, anywhere, at any speed. But at the moment, asking her to halt within 100 yards of the gate is not within the realms of what she can handle. One day I did try to insist she worked near the gate, and even halt near it, and it blew her mind beyond being able to do anything sensible with her for the rest of the day. So, at the moment I might do work which is more challenging away from the gate and make being ‘nearer’ the gate an easy place to be. Or, I might show her ‘If you’re near the gate you can move your feet and trot, but it has to be on the line I would like and a speed of trot which is consistent the whole way around the circle.’ If anyone feels this is very easy work, please feel free to come to spend a day with Remy.

I notice when my horse is worried and DO something about it. I think this is a big one for horses, and our response must be appropriate for each horse, on each different day, and it is not always easy to do. If Remy is in a high state of anxiety I want her to learn to trust that I won’t just ignore this and crack on and ride, that I will do something about it. Being in a high state of anxiety is not a normal state for a horse, and I want to show her, in time, that I have this thing covered and that she doesn’t need to worry. I want her to come to trust that when she is worried she can refer to me. THIS is a whole book in itself but I will have a minor go at discussing it in my next blog.

I am beginning to see signs that Remy thinks I might be worth considering. We went through a stage where she was ‘obedient’ but still anxious . Recently, there have been some signs that she is doing what I ask (massive stuff like, wait with me before going through a gate, or walk past that thing which you would like to run past) and is considering that I might be reasonable, and someone she can trust. If such a concept exists in the horse mind, which to be honest, I have absolutely no idea about. If I am someone she can find peace with, I think that might be a whole lot more useful concept for us both to work towards.

We need to talk about Remy Part 2For those of you who read part 1, you may recall that Remy exploded into my life, through no fault of her own (she didn’t choose to move to Dartmoor did she?) at a time when the bottom had also fallen out of my world. I had certain plans for her which she knew nothing about, and cared about even less. So, it turned out I had to change my ideas about what I wanted to work on, to deal with what was important to Remy.

Having said that for the first few weeks that she was here, I don’t think Remy had any idea of what was important to her. She would wait at the edge of the field staring at the horizon, away from all of the other horses, and when I brought her in she would wait at the edge of the next boundary she came into contact with and stare into space there. There was something somewhere which would fill the hole in her and she spent every day looking for it. I knew her only hope was to find ‘it’ with the horses she now lived with, and with me. I was more optimistic about the horse bit than the me bit to be honest.

I couldn’t spend too much time naval gazing though, as every time I came into contact with Remy she was throwing up things which were either dangerous, or so far away from what I wanted that I had to act.

Day 1 – Remy gets off the lorry after a very long journey so I turn her out with one other horse. As I go to take her head collar off she rips her head away and charges off. I put this down to too many hours travelling and first day anxiety. However, the same thing happens in the stable the next morning , the moment I start to undo the buckle she pulls her head up and away whilst her feet start to leave the scene, even within this confined space.

I guess this might be considered a relatively minor thing and in grander scheme of things why worry too much? Maybe with a different horse I might have worked on this in the fullness of time or figured it would come out in the wash. However, it was clearly a dangerous manoeuvre with such an agile, highly anxious animal, and I sensed that I needed to get some small things worked on as soon as possible as there were some bigger things looming...​My friend Kathleen Lindley Beckham said something along the lines of the putting on and taking off of halters as the start and end of your conversation with your horse each day. It would be nice if it was a ‘Hi there’ or a ‘Thanks for that’ from you both, rather than a mindless act on the part of the human and a ‘screw you’ on the part of the horse. I pay a lot of attention to these kind of small acts of contact with my horses, which is why I get so twitchy about other people handling them.

Therefore, if this was the start then I had better start here. When I took Remy back to the field (which is a blog all of its own...) and went to take the headcollar off I wanted to explain a few critical things. The most important at this moment being, ‘Wait’. Remy is a horse after my own heart – always one step ahead of herself. She and I are both excellent at having a forward lean through life. What’s next? I’m not in this moment I’m in the next, so get on with it! For me to take her headcollar off we both had to WAIT. Be present in this. This was also great opportunity for me to show her that there is a feeling in my hands and coming from the inside of me which means something, and which could actually help her feel better. I hoped that in time she would being to understand that our contact could result in her softening and relaxing – I could be part of the solution.

However, we were not at that stage. The first attempts were just mechanical. Mike Schaffer has an excellent description of this learning process in his book ‘Riding in the Moment’. He is describing training your dressage horse, and how your aids begin as ‘mechanical’ then move to ‘cognitive’ and finally become ‘connected’. We want to end up with a ‘connected’ feel between us and the horse, but we have to sometimes begin with something purely ‘mechanical’ (physically showing the horse what we want) and then move to something ‘cognitive’ (the horse understands your aids) before you can get to the stage where you work together based on connection and feel.So, long before I worry about half passes or flying changes, or even sitting on my horse, I want to be able to put the headcollar on and off without being knocked flying or having mud kicked into my face and ultimately, I would like it to be a really nice ‘connected’ beginning and end to our time together.

My first attempts are ENTIRELY mechanical. When Remy feels the buckle start to come undone on the headcollar and flings her head up I don’t undo it and hang on. In giraffe mode (which those of you who know her will recognise as her number one skill) she starts moving her feet. I don’t undo the buckle and I hang on. This is not easy, up a steep hill, with a rigid Lipizzaner whose head is now about 10 foot above the ground. Tomorrow, I think, I will work on this somewhere more sensible.... but sometimes you just are where you are and have to do your best to deal with what you’ve got.

This is a job of patience and persistence rather than physical strength. I am not pulling her head down, any ‘pull’ from me results in an even bigger pull back from her. I am simply blocking her attempts to throw her head into the air and using movement to ask her to unlock her neck. I don’t even touch the buckle again before she has stopped twirling round in a circle. My only commitment is to getting some semblance of something a little bit better. To begin with, if we can get still feet and a lowered head I will have to take that. We are so far away from the ideal I have to give her some chance of success and can’t worry about the subtleties just yet.20 minutes later (this is probably an under estimation) she finally works out what the job is, and I take the headcollar off. I go to lie down in a darkened room.

The next day we go through the whole thing again in the different context of the stable. This is actually harder for her as she feels more confined and threatens to go up on her back legs (she is excellent at performing the most perfectly balanced levades, should she feel the need) so I have to find a compromise where she might get some idea of what we need to do without blowing her top. This simple thing, to Remy, is an infringement of her ability to do what she wants when she wants (she has spent 3 years doing pretty much entirely her own thing in the field, so I do understand that this is a bit of a shock to the system...). She has an idea about how this should work and changing that while she is so panicked is both a nightmare and totally necessary.

In the end, I just work through it everywhere and every time. In the school, in the field, in the stable. Some days we are back at square one, if something terrible happens like a bird flies out of a tree or other horses are doing something interesting. It seems like it is never going to get better until I realise that I have forgotten all about it, and that taking off Remy’s headcollar is as sweet and easy as taking off it off Tycoon. Well, maybe not quite as he is the king of things like that, but it’s pretty nice. She even waits with me l after I have taken the headcollar off, standing with donkey ears for a scratch and a conversation about how marvellous she is, before ambling off to see her new equine friends.​Please don’t think that everything else has gone as well as this, I’m starting with the high point. I’m banking on the acorns and oak tree theory.

Here is Remy - ready for action, as ever, at an given moments notice. Note the forward lean. With bonus granite poisoning in one leg...